Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  The excellent food at Eklutna also contributed to Jimmy’s recovery. Hospital patients always received fresh milk, and sometimes all the students had fresh milk. There were also fresh vegetables from the fine school garden. One spring I helped Oscar Loft, one of the supervisors, plant the garden. At times there was meat on the table, including pork, beef, moose, mountain sheep, and caribou.

  The five or six supervisors were also teachers. Except for Superintendent Briffitt, they were all white men. There were two supervisors of the boys and of the shop, and one in charge of maintenance and gardening. There were also several women teachers.

  My reading, writing, and arithmetic studies, begun at Alatna, continued at Eklutna. I enjoyed learning and was a good student.

  In our free time we students went on long hikes, and often fished for trout at Eklutna Falls. We could check out guns for hunting rabbits and spruce grouse, which were cooked in the school mess. Sometimes we camped over a weekend and cooked our own meals, including rabbits we shot. The school provided ammunition, and we never returned any of it; if we didn’t use it killing game, we shot at targets.

  It was on one such outing that I saw my first moose, a small bull shot by Augie Mack, one of the older students. Also, soon after I arrived at Eklutna, while on a hike I encountered a huge, hulking brown bear near the railroad tracks. It went on its way peacefully, while I retreated rapidly in the other direction.

  During my second autumn at Eklutna, I went with a group of students on a big game hunt for Dall sheep and caribou. We rode the train to Broad Pass, high in the Alaska Range, and camped near the railroad tracks. Flocks of sheep on the nearby peaks looked like tiny moving patches of snow. White-necked caribou floated over the rough terrain of Broad Pass as they browsed, moving so gracefully that they seemed almost to be without legs. The bull caribou carried huge straw-colored antlers; cow caribou antlers were smaller.

  Some of the older boys and a volunteer professional hunting guide killed about ten sheep and several caribou. The game was dressed and kept in an Alaska Railroad freezer car for use at the school. That good, fresh meat at Eklutna was new to Jimmy and me; the only meat we had eaten at Anvik had come out of cans.

  We often visited nearby homesteaders, spending nights away from the school. At the homes of these friendly people for the first time I saw home-canned foods put up in jars—vegetables and wild meat, including moose, ducks, and geese killed along the shores of nearby Cook Inlet. I learned from these hardworking families how to make preserves out of wild raspberries, blueberries, and cranberries. Some of the homesteaders had animals that were new to me—cattle, pigs, goats, and chickens—and I always enjoyed seeing them. The homesteaders, who lived simply in small homes, were clearing land, developing farms. It was backbreaking work, but I never heard any of them complain. Even I, with no knowledge of farming, could see that years of work were needed to develop land so that it would be suitable for crops and grazing.

  During my second year at Eklutna, in 1927, with several other students I made the twenty-five-mile trip by rail to Anchorage, then a “city” of about 2,000. Originally established as construction headquarters for the Alaska Railroad, Anchorage’s population had peaked at 6,000, and then after completion of the railroad, the population had diminished. I had never seen a place with so many big buildings and so many people. It was on that trip that I saw and rode in my first automobile, a Ford Model T owned by Dr. Howard Romig, a much-loved physician who came to Alaska as a missionary in 1896. I also saw my first movie, a silent, called Taxi, Taxi. It was an exciting trip.

  At the school, Eklutna John, an old Indian trapper, was paid to teach the boys of fourteen and older how to make snowshoes by a method that was probably centuries old. Sent out to trading posts and stores all over Alaska as fast as they were made, the shoes sold for about eight dollars a pair to trappers, guides, and to tourists who bought them as souvenirs. Although I was too young to make snowshoes, I was able to watch what he did, fascinated.

  To select wood for the snowshoes, Eklutna John examined the inner bark of a birch tree to determine the growth pattern and grain of the wood before felling the tree. He left trees with unsuitable grain standing; most people would have had to cut into a tree to determine the grain.

  Splitting the birch logs with wooden wedges, he hewed the pieces down with a small axe, then used a crooked knife to reduce the pieces to drying and bending size. The crooked knife is a traditional tool in the North, and when they were first available, they were often handed down from generation to generation. All early Alaska Natives treasured the metal blade.

  The bent blade of this knife is sharpened on one side for a right-handed man and on the opposite for a left-hander. Used as a drawknife, it is pulled on the cutting stroke, never pushed, and cutting is accomplished at the bend of the knife. It neatly removes fine shavings, and produces a smoother finish than can a straight-bladed knife.

  Eklutna John didn’t soak the wood for making his snowshoes, but worked it dry while it was still green. He took a raw new piece and gradually worked at bending it to make the sharp-angled curve for the front of a snowshoe. Finally, using his teeth, he finished the bend in the wood at a place where it had become very pliable. I never saw him or any of his students break a piece of that beautifully grained birch while bending it.

  The form on which he built the snowshoes had one crosspiece, just back of the front end of the shoe, another piece across the top to reinforce the shoe, and there was one short pole to make the turn up at the front of the snowshoe. He used his crooked knife to finish the wood, shaving off fine slivers. He never used sandpaper. This old Athapaskan expert ground his own rocks for pigment and with it painted the wood an attractive rusty red.

  The rawhide snowshoe filling, front and back, was of calfskin, the most suitable hide available, which was shipped up from Washington State. Eklutna John taught his students to soak the hide, remove the hair, and scrape the rawhide to uniform thickness. His gauge to then cut the rawhide into threadlike strands of proper thickness was a notch cut in his left thumbnail. He held a razor blade in his right hand and, as one of the students pulled it, he let the rawhide flow between his thumbnail notch and the razor blade resting against his left thumbnail. The rawhide had to be wet and soft to prevent his thumb from rubbing raw.

  I saw the same method used for making rawhide strips from caribou and moose hides in the Koyukuk country years later. After I left Eklutna, I had no difficulty in making my own snowshoes, using methods I learned by watching Eklutna John. In the bush, when available, moose rawhide is used to fill the footpad, although beaver skin is also suitable. When available, caribou rawhide is used for the toe and heel areas.

  My only problem at Eklutna was getting into fights. I frequently had black eyes from running into other boys’ fists and a sore rear end from the paddle. The paddle, which had a tapered handle, was a three-foot piece of oak flooring, three-fourths of an inch thick, with rounded edges.

  Each supervisor had a different way of applying this heavy stick. How often a student was paddled depended on the strictness of the supervisor. A first offense normally drew three swats. We were forced to bend over and hold our ankles with both hands—a position that was supposed to lessen the chance of kidneys and leg bones getting hit. The highest number of swats I received was ten. Sometimes the swats were so hard they knocked a student on his head, even when the paddle was being held with one hand. Supervisors were allowed to use two hands on the paddle when punishing students who were fourteen or older.

  Sometimes a paddling became a beating. I saw a girl and a boy who were caught in sexual intimacy take sixty-five swats each, full swing. Neither could sit for a month; they had to stand to eat. That boy’s bottom, which I saw, was a mass of black blood. It was whispered at the school that before my arrival a boy had died from kidney problems resulting from paddling.

  The paddling was barbaric and cruel. Times were different then, and such punishment of children was accepted as necessary
. My paddlings did me no permanent damage, although at one time my resentment was pretty strong. I think generally it was your own fault if you got paddled. But regardless of the paddle, I never gave up my right to protect myself by fighting.

  Federal BIA schools such as the one at Eklutna fulfilled their role of teaching young Alaska Natives the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and hygiene. They educated these youngsters so they could fit into the world of the dominant white society. Eklutna, like many other BIA schools, also taught shop and building methods to the boys, and sewing, nutrition, and cooking to the girls. Without these schools, many Natives would never have learned how to read, or how to cope with modern society.

  There are no longer any BIA schools in Alaska. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has assumed another role in educating Alaskan Natives by helping students go to schools of higher learning through grants and scholarships.

  The single most valuable skill I learned at the Eklutna school was how to read. Reading opened a new world for me, and enabled me to educate myself in any subject. That alone made my stay there worthwhile.

  After we had been at Eklutna almost two years, Dad wrote, telling us to return home to the Koyukuk. He seemed to be getting sick more often. He felt that if we were to survive in Alaska, we also had to learn to make a living from the land, and it would be best for him to teach us that.

  Jimmy and I left Eklutna in May 1927. I was twelve years old and had completed third grade. That was the end of my formal schooling. Now I was to receive a different kind of education.

  7

  NULATO

  Jimmy and I felt we were old hands at traveling when we left Eklutna to return to the Koyukuk. Two years at the school had left their mark; we had gained confidence, and we’d made many friends—some whom we would encounter repeatedly in our travels about Alaska for decades to come.

  One of the superintendents took us to the Eklutna station and helped us board the train. We got off before we reached Nenana to stay with John “Happy Jack” Felix, one of Dad’s early prospecting partners. We were to travel downriver on the steamer Alice, which would leave as soon as the ice went out. While we waited, Happy Jack telephoned Nenana daily to learn about ice conditions in the Tanana and Yukon rivers.

  After about a week the ice was gone, and Happy Jack put us on the train to Nenana, where we stayed over another day until the Alice was made ready for use. As we waited under the care of another of Dad’s old friends, we met Mr. Coghill, a longtime Nenana businessman who insisted that I put on a pair of boxing gloves and spar a few rounds with his son Jack, who was about my age. (Jack Coghill, who still lives at Nenana, later became Alaska’s lieutenant governor.)

  When we were on our way aboard the Alice, Captain Adams let Jimmy and me ride in the wheelhouse as we steamed down the swift Tanana River. Because of the many sharp turns, the paddlewheel was in reverse much of the time. The two barges we pushed, one ahead of the other, needed to swing corners to remain in the channel. Backing down allowed the leading barge to swing around bends with the current; otherwise it would have rammed the bank.

  The Alice stopped at Galena, a tiny Indian village of twenty-seven people, of which only two were there; the others were at muskrat hunting camps. It was the last possible opportunity to make money from furs for the year. Muskrats, hunted with a .22 rifle and taken with traps, were a major source of income for most people in the area. Because muskrats are taken in the spring, this brought cash to live on through the summer. Most residents had to depend on selling furs, for jobs were few, and only a handful of the more fortunate younger men had work on the government-owned riverboats at $60 a month and board, which was big money.

  When the Alice reached Koyukuk Station, one of the first sights I saw was John Evans and Dominic Vernetti, busy buying muskrat skins for their trading posts. As usual, all of the residents had come to welcome passengers and to watch the Alice land. The steamer carried the first fresh produce since the final boat the previous September. Oranges, apples, potatoes, onions—all had been en route from Seattle for slightly more than a month. Anything less than two months old was “fresh.” The bacon and ham also were considered fresh, even though both supported a luxuriant growth of mold. Yukon River residents who could afford twenty-five cents a pound were happy to get that ham and bacon, as well as four- or five-week-old eggs. Bottled root beer was a welcome treat, too.

  I hadn’t seen Dominic Vernetti since I was four, and he kept hugging me and telling everyone how I had saved my dad’s life, “as a baby boy.” To my intense embarrassment, he proclaimed loudly in his inimitable Italian accent, “Dis keed is wort’ his weight in gold.”

  The Alice remained at Koyukuk Station for two days as the crew unloaded freight, some of which went aboard Sam Dubin’s Teddy H. We remembered this little steamboat, for it had rescued us when our mother died. Captain David Tobuk was waiting to run the Teddy H. up the Koyukuk River to deliver freight to various mining camps, stores, and villages.

  Jimmy and I attracted attention because people remembered the circumstances of our mother’s death, and most knew our dad. Several Indians we didn’t know shook hands with us, praising us for surviving, and assuring us that they would never forget us.

  One’s course in life often pivots on small incidents. At Koyukuk, I wandered into John Evans’ store, where I feasted my eyes on the wonderful array of guns, hardware, clothing, and foods. I studied the items, similar to those my dad had offered in his trading post. A shiny new pocketknife caught my eye, and I picked it up. Suddenly the knife was in my pocket and I walked out of the store without paying for it.

  I carried that knife for a day and a night. I couldn’t sleep from worrying about it. I knew what I had done was wrong, but I was afraid to tell anyone. At the last minute before the Alice sailed, I went to Dick Livingston, the purser, and told him I had stolen the knife and wanted to return it to Mr. Evans. “Would you go with me?” I asked.

  John Evans and his wife were watching the boat prepare to leave when Dick and I walked up. I felt as if the whole world was watching when I pulled the knife from my pocket and handed it to him. “I stole it from your store. I’m sorry,” I stammered, tears coursing down my cheeks.

  “Why, Sidney,” was all he managed at first. Then he asked, “Why did you steal it?”

  “I thought I wanted it,” I murmured, studying my shoes.

  “Well,” said John, “that’s the first time anyone has ever returned anything they stole from me.”

  I thought I was going to get a paddling like those I had experienced at Eklutna, but John said, “Son, I have heard nothing but good about you. You are very brave and honest for returning the knife. Because of this, I am going to give it to you.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears until he placed the knife in my hand. Then, lifting my chin, he bent over to look into my eyes and said in a firm voice, “Sidney, if you ever really need anything, let me know. We can always work something out.”

  I treasured that knife for years, a reminder of my terrible mistake as well as of John Evans’ promise and generosity. As Dick walked me back to the gangplank of the waiting Alice, Andrew Pilot stopped me. He was an important medicine man who was influential among the Koyukon people of the Lower Yukon. “You are a good boy. We will always remember you,” he said, shaking my hand.

  As the Alice ran the twenty miles to Nulato where we were to wait for our dad, I had a lot to think about. I was surprised to realize that people all up and down the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers knew who I was. Words of praise from John Evans, Indians I didn’t know, Andrew Pilot, and Dominic Vernetti echoed in my mind.

  I was at a pivotal time in my life, for I was still insecure, although I was beginning to lose my distrust in people. The praise I had received came when I truly needed it. The kind words were more effective than all the scolding and punishment I had had at Eklutna. Those words helped instill in me a feeling of pride in myself and reinforced my determination to succeed. I wanted to justify the faith these imp
ortant people had in me.

  At Nulato, Dick Livingston took Jimmy and me to Bill Dalquist, a friend of our dad’s who was to care for us until Dad and his partner, Charlie Swanson, arrived from their trapping grounds far up the Koyukuk.

  I made many friends in those intervening weeks. Jimmy and I played baseball with local kids. It was strictly hardball, no softball, which was considered “girly ball.” I met Cosmos Mountain, a Koyukon as fascinating as his name. He was grinding the valves of an eight-horsepower Kermath boat engine, and I helped him for a few days. I had wanted to learn about engines and how to use tools, and this was a good chance. Cosmos played the violin at local dances with Aloysius Demoski, Alfred Dalquist, and others. Dances were the main form of entertainment in the villages.

  I helped Cosmos peel poles and crosspieces to be used in building a fish wheel. While working, Cosmos told me exciting stories of Koyukon hunts. From him I gleaned the beginnings of appreciation for the culture of the Koyukon people.

  I also met the Sommers boys, John and Bill, who were about my age. Their father, an old-country German storekeeper, had assigned them to the cordwood detail—cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood. I helped them with the firewood for several days, and I helped them unload a couple of barges that arrived with stock for the Sommers’ store. Their father, John C. Sommers, was good to both Jimmy and me. We often ate at the bountiful Sommers table.

  Dad and Charlie Swanson finally arrived with their thirty-two-foot riverboat Vixen, powered by a Model T Ford engine. Lean and tough from a winter of trapping, Dad was cheerful and optimistic.

  Charlie Swanson, a Swede, had left the old country in 1897 to look for gold in the Klondike, so he and Dad had that in common. He was a grizzled, gray-haired old man who talked little, and then with a strong Swedish accent. He had a strong personality, and we always understood clearly where we stood with him. Soon Jimmy and I regarded him as we would a kindly but strict uncle.